As is known in the art, a virus may be transmitted between persons due to the virus attaching to an instrument, such as an endoscope for example, used during a surgical procedure and ineffective post operative sterilization of such instruments. Such virus transmission may lead to serious infection, injury or even death of a patient. There has, therefore, been a trend to eliminate the transmission of such viruses via surgical instruments due to ineffective sterilization techniques.
In some instances, however, it may be relatively difficult to clean an instrument such as an endoscope. For example, an operative endoscope generally includes a tube having a bore of relatively small diameter extending through a generally central longitudinal axis thereof. The operative endoscope may further include electrical or optical components which are relatively delicate or fragile. Endoscopes having such delicate, fragile components may thus generally not be disposed in an autoclave and exposed to temperatures which are high enough to guarantee sterilization of the endoscope without damaging the instrument. Thus, it is relatively difficult to ensure effective sterilization of such endoscopic instruments using conventional techniques.
In addition to autoclave sterilization techniques, there exist sterilization techniques such as ETO gas sterilization, liquid sterilization and gamma ray sterilization. These techniques, however provide several drawbacks. For example, one problem with gas sterilization is that it requires a relatively long duration of time, typically in the range of about six to ten hours to insure adequate sterilization. Furthermore strict regulations exist for exhausting the resulting gas. Liquid sterilization techniques are generally not as effective as the autoclave technique in some applications and gamma ray sterilization techniques may not be used on those surgical instruments having glass therein since the gamma rays adversely effect the glass.